


The Heartlines

by petitepineapple (orphan_account)



Category: The Penderwicks Series - Jeanne Birdsall
Genre: Angst, F/M, Humor, Romance, Skyffrey.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:20:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26965837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/petitepineapple
Summary: Each time a person falls in love, a thin scar called a Heartline appears on their wrist. Skye resolves to keep herself from ever getting one of these marks for fear that she will lose control over her heart if she does. Then she meets Jeffrey.Cross posted from ff.net
Relationships: Jeffrey Tifton/Skye Penderwick
Kudos: 10





	1. Chapter 1

_Tags: Angst, humor, romance, Skyffrey._

Skye had hated the marks with a ferocious conviction all her life.

In school, her classmates had been both thrilled and anxious when their first ones blazed onto the tender underside of their forearms; the boys clapped each other on the back in fond amusement and the girls gasped and giggled and admired the fresh scars with blushing reverence. Her father had had only three on the underside of his wrist when Skye was a child, and she noticed that the last line was different from the others. It had seared deeper into his skin, leaving a darker, rougher scar than the previous two. She did not understand why this was until she asked Rosalind about it several years later.

 _"_ _The deeper the love for someone, the deeper the Heartline,"_ Rosy had explained, looking pensive. _"That last line on Daddy's arm is the one he got when he fell in love with Mommy."_

 _"_ _So you get a Heartline when you love someone?"_ asked Skye, skeptical.

 _"_ _You get one when you fall in love with somebody. When you adore and appreciate them, and want to be with them all the time, and would do anything for them. You can only get a Heartline with a certain kind of love. For instance, I love Daddy and you and Jane and Batty, but there aren't any Heartlines on my arm, yet. See?"_ And she pulled back her sweatshirt sleeve, exposing a stretch of pale skin that was completely blank from wrist to elbow.

Skye was silent for a moment, then asked, _"Can you control whether you get one of those marks or not?"_

 _"_ _I don't think so,"_ Rosalind murmured, pushing her sleeve down. _"You can't exactly choose not to fall in love, can you?"_

 _"_ _Rats,"_ said Skye. Getting a Heartline meant losing control of one's heart, and that frightened her far more than she liked to admit.

Consequently, she dedicated much of her growing up to keeping herself devoid of Heartlines. She woke each morning with shivers of illogical dread shooting down her spine; she would turn her left forearm over and feel the warm rush of relief at seeing that it was unmarred. She was proud of her achievement, at remaining utterly in control of her feelings and desires. Skye was still Heartline free when Rosy and Jane began getting theirs. She teased and congratulated them, all the while feeling a deep disgust for the amorous tally lines on their wrists. It was horrible, she thought, to fall in love and know that whole world could see it. There were ways of prolonging the agony, far-fetched tips that parents passed on to their children. _Wear long sleeves, blame the scar on an accident with a kitchen knife, never wave with your left arm, wear a bracelet._ The list went on and on, full of idiotic solutions that never got a person anywhere. Even worse were the people that flaunted their Heartlines, bragging about them to an alarming degree, so stupidly proud that their heart was literally in someone else's hands.

Skye thought they were all morons.

As she grew into a teenager, her job became exponentially more difficult. The closer she and Jeffrey got, the more she wrestled with her feelings, battling to convince her heart that her feelings for the boy were completely platonic. During her first trip to visit Jeffrey in Boston, Skye awoke on her last night with her heart jolting strangely and an ominous tingling in her forearm.

 _"_ _No,"_ she'd whispered, horrified. _"No, no, no, no, no—I'm not getting one, not ever_." She jiggled her arm, flexing her fingers against the warm, prickling pain just beneath her skin. After several tense moments, the sensation faded and Skye fell back onto her pillow, glaring into the darkness _. "I am in control,"_ she had said to the empty room _. "I am always in control."_ Then she fell asleep and did not remember the incident in the morning.

At Point Mouette, Skye came so dangerously close to getting a Heartline that it took a superhuman amount of effort for her to redirect her thoughts to les sentimental things. Jeffrey—the mere image of him dissolving into a heap on the beach, distraught over Alec—had almost done her in. But there were more pressing matters to deal with, so she threw herself into action, feverishly grateful for the distraction. It went on like this for so long that, after a certain point, it became barely noticeable. Skye was used to shoving her feelings away each time she saw Jeffrey. It was a dismal routine.

. . .

. . .

Three weeks after Skye turned twenty-one, Jeffrey invited the sisters to come down to New York City for a few weeks of urban adventure in the gorgeous late-June weather. He had received a full scholarship to Juilliard and the Penderwicks had already attended many of his public concerts, always deeply impressed at his ever-improving musical skills. Batty adored Jeffrey's playing and had her sights set on Juilliard as well, even though she was thirteen and a half and still slept with Funty on occasion. Whenever Skye complimented Jeffrey's piano playing, which was always, he would feign shock and tease her mercilessly. _"You're a complex physics major, how can you possibly appreciate my music?"_ he would ask, laughing.

 _"_ _When have I ever been one-dimensional?"_ Skye would retort. _"Physics is only a small composite of my spectrum of interests."_

_"_ _Says the girl who refused tickets to the soccer world cup because she was working on an 'extremely fascinating' theory of momentum."_

_"_ _And yet I'm still a better soccer player than you."_

Jeffrey would look into her eyes with a grudging grin, utterly unaware of the internal battle raging in Skye's head. She would marshal her thoughts—she always did—and move on to another topic of conversation, burning with annoyance at the gullible human heart.

Now, as she sat in the bedroom she still shared with Jane during summers, she thrust a last pair of denim shorts into her suitcase and zipped it shut with an air of finality. Looking around for any forgotten articles of clothing, she saw a rectangle of wall where the lavender paint was slightly darker. This was because Skye had taken her full color poster of the periodic table to college with her—it was the only accessory in her plain dorm room. That and a few photographs of her family and Jeffrey—and a small one of Hound, as he had passed away several years before. Much to Skye's relief, Jane had taken her catastrophically messy habits to her own college where she was a creative writing major; now their room was pleasantly neat, empty of the stacks of paper and books and pens that were always getting under everyone's feet. Jane's favorite books were back on her shelf for the summer, though their covers bore new scratches from being carted around from home to college and back again. _Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets_ also had a large coffee stain on the spine, evidence of Jane's latest addiction.

"Has anyone seen my copy of _Pymalion_?" Mr. Penderwick called from out of sight, sounding desperate. "I need to reference it and I can't find it anywhere."

Skye stood up from the bed, awash in a sudden, vicious memory of having to read the play in high school.

The door hinge of the upstairs bathroom creaked and Jane appeared in the hall, twisting her hair into a bun. "I borrowed it last night, Daddy," she yelled over the banister. "Professor Gout recommended I read it this summer."

"Professor _Gout_?" Skye joined Jane in the hallway, incredulous. "As in the acute attack of inflammatory arthritis?"

"It's his name," snapped Jane. "Have some respect."

"Jane, I'm willing to bet any amount of money that you laughed when he introduced himself."

Jane fixed Skye with an irritable pout. "I didn't laugh," she replied. "I, at least, have some semblance of maturity."

"Mm. You'd do better to work in the honesty area, really."

Jane smacked Skye's arm, lightly, and Skye saw the neat row of Heartlines below the crease of her elbow. "I still don't understand how you don't have one," remarked Jane, following Skye's gaze. "I get new ones all the time."

"I'm not like you," said Skye.

Jane gave her an arch look. "Despite your efforts to seem otherwise, I know you have a noble heart and I know you care about certain people."

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean I'm in love with any of them."

Jane tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, eyes shining with a strange enthusiasm. "Not yet," she said. "But love is like a landmine, Skye. You can't see it coming and you can't escape it and you will never look at things the same afterward. It's the most beautiful, tragic inevitability in the history of humankind."

A beat passed, then Skye spoke. "Well, that was unbearably verbose."

Jane's dreamy look vanished, replaced by one of exasperation. "It's good to know you picked up something from all that vocabulary studying for the SAT," she said nastily, and flounced off in high dudgeon.

Skye waited for the inevitable slamming of doors that always seemed to follow their arguments, and felt grimly satisfied when Jane caught her toe in the doorjamb and erupted in a litany of Victorian profanity.

Though it was drenched in flowery descriptions, Jane had a point, and it was because of this very point that Skye kept her heart closed. If you couldn't see it coming, you couldn't escape it, and you were never the same afterward, love really didn't seem any better than a landmine. Except, perhaps, for the fact that a landmine blew you to bits, and love kept you alive in a state of bleak broken heartedness. Well, some people never had their hearts broken; Skye knew that. But that was if they did everything right—and seeing as she did everything wrong, love and herself seemed a disastrous combination.

It was Batty who jarred Skye from her thoughts. "Do you think Jeffrey'll let me play one of the grand pianos this time?" she asked, coming up the stairs with her arms full of laundry.

"One can only hope," said Skye. "Yours needs a break from you playing it twenty-four seven."

"No matter how much anyone resents my piano playing, it's still better than you screeching on that trumpet."

"Point taken," Skye acknowledged grudgingly. She paused. "It's still incredibly weird seeing Heartlines on your arm, Batty," she murmured, staring at the exposed underside of her sister's forearm. "You're so young."

"Rosy had one when she was thirteen."

"You have two," Skye reminded her. The first had been a boy in Batty's fifth grade history class, named Calvin. He was an extremely shy sort of person, but Batty obviously adored him and was devastated when he moved away several months later. The second had appeared on Batty's arm just before her thirteenth birthday, and when her sisters begged her to tell them who it was for, she eventually explained that she loved one of her girlfriends—Heather, who played the harp and took long, sunny walks with Batty after school.

 _"_ _She's the one who's always laughing, right?"_ Jane had asked, and when Batty nodded, she said, _"I like her,"_ in a very decided way.

"I can't help it," said Batty, shrugging. "And it doesn't make much sense to take relationship advice from someone who's never had a Heartline."

"It doesn't mean I'm inept when it comes to feelings."

Batty raised her eyebrows. "You know," she remarked after a moment, "This must be a record."

"What must be?"

"You being twenty-one and never having fallen in love."

"I think I'll continue the trend."

"For how long?" asked Batty, shifting her armload of clothing.

"Forever," said Skye and granted her younger sister with a tight smile before heading for the stairs.

"Good luck," said Batty, with a strange, ambiguous mixture of sarcasm and sincerity.

"Don't need it," Skye replied over her shoulder.

She felt a sudden hot prickle in her left wrist as she descended the stairs and, heart pounding, she pushed all thoughts of Jeffrey from her mind, violently relieved when the tingling faded with them. Embarking on another trip to see Jeffrey was like striding into a minefield and knowing about it beforehand. It was treacherous and unwise, and still Skye kept walking.

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

The Penderwick sisters were to meet Jeffrey at a small café in Manhattan, called Crumbs. He'd emailed them the address a week previously, so Rosalind had printed it and taped it to the dashboard of her miniscule Sedan. She did not wish to be caught off guard like that fateful car ride to Arundel so many years before, when Hound had devoured their map.

"Why tape the address to the dashboard?" asked Skye, squinting out the passenger window at the gargantuan buildings surrounding them. "Unless one of us has a psychotic break and decides to eat it ourselves, I can pretty much guarantee its safety."

"I don't want to risk it," said Rosalind. She edged her iced tea away from the paper for emphasis, drumming the fingers of her other hand on the steering wheel. She had a single Heartline on the underside of her slender wrist, as scarlet as the day it first appeared. Skye stared at it for a moment, thinking with rye fondness of the boy in question who, most fortunately, had had a matching one on his own forearm for ten years. Though she was largely a disbeliever in Heartlines, she approved of this particular relationship quite heartily.

"Look!" said Jane, hanging out her window to stare open-mouthed at a humongous billboard advertisement for _Les Miserables_. "How fabulous," she remarked. "Wouldn't it be spectacular if I was cast in the Broadway musical one day?"

"You can't sing to save your life," Skye pointed out. "The best part you'd get would be as an extra."

"Well, thanks for the vote of confidence, Skye."

Skye didn't apologize. With each passing moment, she became more nervous—to the point where she felt physically ill and tremendously snappish because all the blood in her body seemed to have congregated in her head, and then further aggravated because this had the unfortunate effect of turning her brain to mush. At the moment, her critical thinking could not rival that of an anteater. She was trying to focus herself, forget the sentimental nonsense, and see clearly again, but Rational Thought and Level-headedness had obviously absconded together for South America. Even as her sisters chattered around her, Skye's ability to comprehend what they were saying was close to nil.

Pitiful. Absurd. True.

In reality, she was far more nervous about acquiring a Heartline than of actually seeing Jeffrey, but the two events were related so closely in her mind that she actually found herself feeling a bit annoyed at her friend, despite the fact that he had done nothing to upset her.

"Hang on," said Rosalind, taking hold of the steering wheel with an iron grip. "I think we may be able to squeeze between those two taxis." She pursed her lips in concentration and stepped hard on the gas pedal; the Sedan jumped forward and its occupants found themselves in great danger of whiplash.

"Ouch!" yelped Batty, whacking her forehead against the seat in front of her. Jane grimaced sympathetically.

"Sorry, Batty," apologized Rosalind, rolling deftly into what seemed like the only vacant parking spot for blocks. "Any serious bruising?"

Batty borrowed Jane's makeup compact and peered at herself in the minuscule mirror. "None at all," she concluded, and Rosalind looked vigorously relieved.

Skye gave herself a fleeting once-over in the rear view mirror before getting out, seized with the desire to pull her hair back into its customary ponytail.

"Leave it," said Rosalind, starting Skye from her thoughts.

"How did you—"

"Twenty-one years I've known you and you still think it's difficult for me to tell what you're thinking?" Rosy laughed. "Piece of cake."

Skye poked her hair despairingly and clambered from the car, glancing around at the tableau of urban life. As always, there were street vendors with various wares—food, art, clothing accessories, souvenirs—throngs of men and women moving hastily along the sidewalk with bags and briefcases in hand, myriad shopaholic tourists, and groups of teenagers slinging crude jokes at one another and laughing boisterously. It was both intriguing and overwhelming.

Jane unfolded herself from the backseat and joined Skye on the pavement. She inhaled with relish, looking for all the world like a grizzly bear reacquainting herself with the world after a winter of hibernation.

"It smells like possibility," she sighed.

"Or pollution," said Skye, with a verbal eye roll.

"Or maybe both," Batty added, her dark curls catching on the low branch of a spindly cherry tree.

"Yes," said Jane, detangling Batty's hair. "New York smells like possibility and pollution. Oh, that's lovely."

Skye checked her watch. "We should get going," she said, her pulse chattering in her ears. They had less than five minutes to walk seven blocks; it didn't look promising. After a frustrating skirmish with their parking meter, the sisters were off, walking single file along the block. Skye's heart was pounding alarmingly against her ribcage and her insides were the consistency of jelly. Trying to pull herself together, she began reciting the digits of Pi in her head. She made it to forty before her concentration flew apart and she had to start over.

"I wonder how Jeffrey will look," said Jane, swiping on lip-gloss as she walked.

Skye frowned. "He'll look like Jeffrey, obviously."

"You know what I mean." Jane slipped the tube of lip-gloss into her pocket. "He always looks a little different. Older. Handsomer."

Skye blushed and looked away. _I am in control._

_I am always in control._

_. . ._

_. . ._

* * *


	3. Chapter 3

When they reached Crumbs, Skye threw her shoulders back, marched heroically up to the door, and pulled it open with a solid yank. Her sisters filed in after her and they stood blinking on the threshold, adjusting to the sudden dimness. She looked around at the empty café tables, thinking worriedly that Jeffrey hadn't come, that he had forgotten, when a tall figure rose from the farthest table and began to laugh.

"This must be a tradition," said Jeffrey, wading through the small sea of iron-wrought tables and chairs. "You're always two minutes late."

And then the sisters were laughing and surging forward to hug him in an enthusiastic tangle of limbs. Rosalind kissed Jeffrey on the cheek, Jane seized him in a hug that must surely have left bruises, Batty said something happily garbled about grand pianos and how glad she was to see him, and Skye—well. She looked straight into Jeffrey's eyes and said, "I suggest you invest in a better timepiece. Yours is running fast."

"Lovely to see you, as well," said Jeffrey, concealing a grin with some difficulty. He hugged Skye, and she reciprocated a bit stiffly.

Rosalind rescued Skye from an awkward silence. "We got here as quickly as we could, but the traffic was atrocious."

"It was," added Jane. "How do you manage living here?"

"By walking a lot." Jeffrey smiled. "I'm glad I decided not to live in the residence hall. I don't have much tolerance for college students and I am one of them. It's an only child thing, I think."

"Indeed," said Jane, who sometimes fantasized about being an only child, but always abandoned these fancies out of guilt.

"It really has been too long," said Jeffrey, beaming widely at down at them from his impressive height of six feet and one inches.

"Every day without you feels like a year, Jeffrey," bemoaned Jane. Skye administered a light punch to her sister's shoulder.

"I swear you've gotten even taller," said Rosy, looking up at Jeffrey in amused wonder.

"The extra inch makes all the difference," he laughed. "And you all look quite gorgeous, as well."

He wasn't looking at Skye when he said this, but heat flooded her cheeks all the same and she clenched her fist, fingernails biting her palm.

The flow of conversation pushed on around her, as if she was a stone in a river current. She returned to the present to hear Jeffrey offering to catch them all a cab back to his apartment.

"So you can repose for a while," he added. "It's a long drive down, you deserve the rest." And he winked at Rosalind.

"I'll take our Sedan and follow the taxi," said Rosalind. "All the important things are in that car. Like toothbrushes and Skye's graphing calculator."

Everyone, excepting Skye, chuckled.

"I'll go hail a cab, then." Jeffrey strode back out onto the street and Jane followed him, no doubt hoping to take copious notes on the process of cab hailing.

Rosalind met Skye's eyes and granted her a strange, significant smile. And before Skye could ask why, Rosalind and Batty had walked into the blinding sunshine of the afternoon and she was alone.

. . .

. . .

Jeffrey's apartment was really more of a glorified flat. It was minuscule with a narrow corridor spanning from living room, to kitchen, to bathroom, to bedroom in a tight rectangle. Here and there stacks of sheet music were propped on random horizontal surfaces, such as the top of the refrigerator and, most inconveniently, the toilet seat. Yet despite the inevitable overload of exercise books and battery operated metronomes (one for each room in the apartment), all was well-kept and remarkably neat. Jeffrey was especially proud of his baby grand piano. It crouched impressively in the corner of the sitting room and drew longing looks from Batty, who eyed the piano as though she was starved and it was the last morsel of food on the planet.

"By all means," said Jeffrey, noticing Batty's expression. "You can never play a piano too often."

Rosalind flashed Jeffrey a grateful smile as Batty dropped her suitcase and flew to the piano, pulling the bench out with vigor. "It isn't her only pursuit," she explained. "But it is an enthusiastic obsession." She picked up her bag and swung it over her shoulder. "Do you mind if I put this in the bedroom?"

"Not at all. I was actually planning to sleep on the floor for the duration of your stay, anyway." He waved off Rosalind's horrified look. "It's completely voluntary. Go unpack."

Rosalind gave in with obvious reluctance and exited the room.

"And Batty's lucky, by the way," Jeffrey yelled after her. "There's really no better obsession to have." Then he looked over at Skye—she was fiddling with a high tech recording device—and raised his brows. "And then there's the physics major."

Skye pursed her lips. "You always say that."

"Because I'm horrible at physics and can't even entertain the thought of having a career in it."

"I feel the same about music. Not that I don't appreciate it," she added, turning away to study the volume knobs.

"Skye, you literally can't name one song on the radio."

"False."

Jeffrey folded his arms over his chest and fixed her with an impudent gaze. His eye contact was palpable; Skye could feel his eyes on her, melting her iron resolve. She reluctantly gave up her examination of the speakers and returned the look. He was still staring at her, and she noted with some satisfaction that he was unable to keep a small smile from working its way onto his face.

"I'll prove it to you," she said. "The next time I hear a song on the radio I'll give you the title, artist, and year it was released."

"That's ambitious."

"I give you my word."

"I have a feeling you 're going to be up all night researching popular songs," said Jeffrey, laughing. "And I suspect there might be a few pie-charts and Microsoft Excel spreadsheets involved."

"Shut up," Skye said good-naturedly, rising to her feet. "I have faith in my song-naming abilities."

Inwardly, she wasn't sure she could distinguish a Bach concerto from a Rihanna number, but she would certainly die trying.

"This is completely off topic," said Jeffrey, "but I bought tickets to _Phantom of the Opera_ for tonight."

"Oh," said Skye who had absolutely, completely, utterly despised musicals since her fiasco with _Sisters and Sacrifice. "_ That's...good."

"I was able to swing it because of a lovely little thing called a student discount." Jeffrey grinned.

Skye, who still had nothing very encouraging to say, gave a polite smile. "That's really generous of you."

Perhaps she seemed a bit too happy, because Jeffrey suddenly looked guilty. "Well, here's the thing," he added. "There are only three tickets."

Skye frowned. "They were sold out?"

"No, I only bought three."

"Why?"

"Because I thought I remembered you saying that you hated musicals."

Deeply relieved, Skye sat down on Jeffrey's minute sofa. "I can't believe you remember that!"

"Of course I remember! That's why I was so confused a moment ago—you really looked genuinely excited at the prospect of seeing _Phantom!"_

He looked so bewildered that Skye began laughing. "Apparently I'm a better actor than I thought."

"You're normally so honest," said Jeffrey, sitting down beside her. "What happened?"

"I didn't want to be rude."

"I'd like you to think about what you just said."

Skye punched his arm. "It might have escaped your attention, but I'm not a complete monster. I do have manners."

"Said Spock."

Skye punched Jeffrey's arm again.

They didn't speak for a moment, and a question pushed to the forefront of Skye's mind. "So why didn't you get a ticket for yourself? I don't mind doing my own thing tonight."

He shook his head. "I didn't want to see it a second time."

And then it dawned on Skye that she and Jeffrey would most likely be spending the evening together. Oh. Oh no.

"I thought we'd do something," said Jeffrey.

"What, exactly?"

"I don't know. Something artful and adventurous."

"We could play soccer in a hallway somewhere, then hide from security." Skye feigned total sobriety.

Jeffrey laughed. "That was perfection, wasn't it?"

"Those were the days," said Skye. "And so are these."

They smiled at each other. A beat passed and something passed between them; a spark of understanding, a recognition. And then, inexplicably, Jeffrey's gaze was leaving Skye's face and traveling down to her horribly exposed left forearm. He looked at the bare stretch of skin for a split second, then back at Skye, his expression unfathomable. If he was puzzled, disappointed, or simply uninterested, she couldn't tell. The moment hung between them like a silk thread, fragile and thrumming. Batty was still playing the piano; the song tumbled around them like falling hailstones, mixing with the persistent wailing of police sirens from somewhere far away. It was the strangest duet Skye had ever heard and it filled her with roaring emptiness.

She stood up. The thread snapped and she was glad. It was better that way. "So. Tonight we do something artful and adventurous?"

Jeffrey looked up at her, blinking. "Yes," he said, his face still unreadable. "Something eventful and enormous."

"Jeffrey—why are we speaking like this?"

"I don't know."

"I don't know, either. I feel like a human thesaurus."

Jeffrey broke into a smile. "And I always thought I was the only one who felt like that."

* * *


	4. Chapter 4

There were four scarlet Heartlines on Jeffrey's arm.

The first appeared when he was fifteen and met a girl named Julia at his school in Boston. Julia was a year ahead of Jeffrey and he had been greatly impressed by her large talent and equally large heart. They were together for two blissful months, and then Julia admitted to Jeffrey that she wasn't over a previous boyfriend. She apologized with genuine sorrow and left him standing alone in the rain, and that was the end of his first official relationship. The second and third Heartlines had blazed their way onto his forearm when he was seventeen. He fell in love first with Kate, and later Laura, both of whom were stubborn intellectual types with strong opinions. Unfortunately for Jeffrey, Kate never returned his feelings and, after a six month relationship with the aggressively red-haired Laura, she broke up with him because his easy going nature bored her.

Thus, Jeffrey put all thoughts of love out of his mind for a good few years. He studied hard, got accepted into Juilliard, made new friends, and left more than a few Heartlines on the wrists of others. He was so profoundly focused on his goals that it was a wonder he even had time to acquire his fourth and final Heartline. And when he did he felt odd inside, for this girl reminded him so sharply of someone else he knew that it was almost frightening. Their relationship was brief and baffling, and seemed destined to fail from the very start. It gave Jeffrey slippery sensation in his gut; he feared that he had not fallen for Ava, but for the person she so strongly reminded him of. In the end, he terminated the relationship quickly and apologetically and without looking back.

And that was that. Curtains closed. La fin.

As someone watching from the sidelines during these roller-coaster romances, Skye had been very stern with herself and done everything in her power to avoid dwelling on the fact that Jeffrey's love life did not involve her. She convinced herself that it was just as well-any relationship between them that extended beyond the platonic would likely be horribly awkward and end in catastrophe. And much as she adored Jeffrey, it was their fierce and phenomenal friendship that mattered most. If Skye grew into old age with Jeffrey as nothing more than a dear friend, her life would still have been good one. But this didn't always soothe the sour ache of watching him with someone else. The hurricane of tangled feelings still brewed within her, ferocious and tender as the day she collided with that green eyed boy under a hedge.

Skye was sitting on the sofa, reading _The Mechanics of the Doorknob,_ when Jane glided into the room wearing a lavender highwaisted skirt and silk sleeveless blouse.

"Vintage," she sighed, rotating on the spot so that Skye couldn't possibly miss an inch of her attire.

"Mm," said Skye, turning page seventy-seven.

"Are you even paying attention?"

"I don't think so," Skye murmured, highlighting a particularly interesting sentence. "Now you know how it feels to try to talk to someone who's always got their face jammed in a book."

Jane's retaliation was interrupted as Rosalind and Batty appeared in the doorway. "My arms feel like bricks," said Rosalind, gesturing to Batty's french braid. "You're getting too tall for this," she laughed, smoothing her younger sister's navy eyelet dress.

"Never," said Batty. "I'll just have to start sitting down."

Skye and Jane laughed, and Skye marked the page in her book with one of Jeffrey's sheets of piano music. She hoped he wouldn't murder her for misplacing it.

"What do you and Jeffery have planned for tonight?" asked Rosalind, leaning gently against the door frame.

She looked very pretty, thought Skye. "I have no idea whatsoever."

"Well, I hope you have a good time."

"Thank you," said Skye, feeling oddly prim.

"And Skye-a word of advice: use your head. I know you're an adult and I know you're intelligent, but there have been _situations_ in the past and I really don't want to come home tonight and discover that you've gone to jail or blown something up, or anything. Alright?"

Skye rolled her eyes. "Yes, because we all know how much I enjoy explosions and jail cuisine."

Jeffrey strode in on the tail end of Skye's remark and winked at her. "Her rebellious nature is impossible to suppress," he said to Rosalind. "The best we can do is stand by with a first aid kit and make sure the local fire department is on speed dial."

Skye flashed a rather alarming hand gesture in Jeffrey's direction.

"Er, we should probably we going," said Rosalind, giving Skye a threatening _I-am-Rosalind-Penderwick-and-you-will-NOT-do that-sort-of-thing-as-long-as-you-are-my-younger-s ister_ glare.

It was effective.

"Right," said Jeffrey. "You have the directions to the theater?"

"Yes, right here," said Jane, waving a sheet of college-ruled notebook paper. Jeffrey's handwriting was a pleasant jumble of loops and swooping lines.

"Fantastic. Have a wonderful time and remember that if you hang around long enough after the show, you can get the cast member's autographs."

Everyone looked at Jane.

"It's an extremely rare opportunity!" she protested.

"We'll see," said Rosalind.

Jane heaved a long suffering sigh and snatched up her purse. "My whole life has led me to this moment," she exclaimed. "Let it be wondrous and let it be great."

Skye groaned and smacked her forehead with _The Mechanics of the Doorknob,_ while Rosalind pulled Jane out the door, rolling her eyes at Jeffrey. "Sorry," she mouthed and Batty giggled.

Then door swung shut behind them and they were gone.

Skye looked at Jeffrey and he smiled. "Get your jacket," he said. "I have an idea."

. . .

. . .

The thread of globular lights spanning the Brooklyn Bridge from end to end had a luminescent effect on every object, plant and person nearby. Cars raced quietly along its length, glistening with the artificial starlight, and the faces looking out seemed lit from within. It was quite possibly the most beautiful thing Skye had seen in a long while and she rarely noticed nor cared about such things.

"It's something, isn't it?" Jeffrey turned around for a moment to pay their taxi fare, and Skye nodded vigorously.

"It's the greatest something of all the somethings I've seen."

"Indeed." Jeffrey straightened, slipped a few dollars change back into his pocket, and gestured toward the yawning entrance of the bridge. "Shall we?"

"If you stop talking like a character from one of Jane's Downton Abbey fanfictions." Skye gave Jeffrey a light push and he waggled his brows at her.

"My sincerest apologies."

"You can't control yourself, can you?"

"Maybe not." He closed his hand around Skye's wrist and tugged her forward. "I've always wanted to do this. Not alone, though," he reflected. "Because there isn't much point in doing something enormous and eventful if no one else is with you to remember it."

"It's a fair point," said Skye. "Kind of like the whole, 'if a tree falls in the woods' sort of thing. If no one else can verify that your memory is of a real experience, it all seems strange. Like it didn't happen. It's a lonely thought."

"It is," said Jeffrey. "That's why we're going to walk this bridge together."

They approached the nearest end of the bridge-it was their beginning-and Skye set foot on the narrow walkway to the right of the zooming vehicles. It was fantastic; the golden haze of a night-sky above the city that never slept, the black water below, the skyscrapers that clustered at the horizon, the rough and raw city noise of honking cars and voices from the people in boats beneath them.

Skye turned to Jeffrey to commend him on his idea, but her words died in her mouth. He was staring over the river with something like clarity and sadness, as if he were gazing far into the future and grasping how infinitesimal their place in it was.

And then she felt it, a sharp searing tingle in her left arm that throbbed with the pumping of her heart. Oh, god. Skye jolted forward and clenched the iron railing. Her body suddenly wanted to expel the contents of her stomach and for a few tense moments she actually thought she would projectile vomit over the rail. It was a terrifying experience and she desperately wanted it to end, not because of the physical discomfort per se, but because of the outcome. Everyone knew what these symptoms meant, Skye too, and she wasn't ready for a Heartline. The thought of displaying her truth to Jeffrey was unbearable.

"Are you alright?" Jeffrey was scrutinizing her with a critical eye.

Skye looked away, feeling horribly transparent. "Yes. Fine. Good."

"You looked like you were about to pass out."

Jeffrey's voice was warm with worry and Skye hated it, hated that it drew her in like a moth to flame. It made things phenomenally difficult. "I'm fine," she repeated.

She relaxed her grip on the railing and flexed her fingers, feeling hot blood return to them.

"I shouldn't have dragged you out here after you've had such a long day."

"Nonsense, I-" Skye's arm throbbed again and she gritted her teeth. _I am in control._ "I can handle an evening walk. I'm not a fainting flower."

Jeffrey kindly didn't mention Rainbow. "I believe you," he said. "But if you feel ill at any point just tell-"

"I _know,"_ said Skye. "And I will."

Jeffrey curtailed his concerns with a nod and they began walking again, shoulder to shoulder. "I like this," he said after a few beats of silence.

"What?"

"Being between two places. It's as though we're in a third dimension."

Skye laughed. "Have you been stealing my astronomy volumes?"

"Seriously," said Jeffrey, spoiling the effect altogether by slipping into a smile. "What would you call this? Nomansland? Limbo?"

"A state of uncertainty," said Skye. "But that sounds sort of...ominous."

"You're right, though. Life's the same way. No one can turn back. No one can predict the future. We're stuck right where we are, in the here and now, and despite everything we really have no idea what the next day will bring. Minute, even."

Jeffrey looked sideways at Skye and frowned. "If that makes sense."

"It does."

"I'm glad."

They looked up as a decrepit pick-up truck lumbered toward them, windows rolled all the way down. Its passengers had stuck their arms out the windows so they could tickle the night air, and they were laughing and singing along with some jangly tune from the radio.

Radio.

Skye remembered her promise and strained to hear the song. It was a lovely song, really, and made her feel rather at peace with the world. The pick-up truck rolled past them, and a pair of laughing teenaged girls peered out from the backseat.

They waved; Skye and Jeffrey raised their hands in reply. It was an acknowledging wave and a celebratory one, a friendly gesture between fellow bridge-goers that were going, going somewhere, going anywhere. Just going.

And then she had it.

"I Will Wait," said Skye, without missing a bit. "Mumford and Sons. 2012," she wagered, not exactly certain about the last part.

Jeffrey whistled. "Impressive."

"I gave you my word."

He shook his head, smiling, and stopped to look out at the river from the middle of the bridge. His eyes were impossibly green. "You amazing me," he remarked. He laughed. "And frighten me, too."

Skye rested her forearms on the railing and looked down at the water, pulse accelerating. "It's a gift."

A soft breeze off the river ruffled their hair, and Jeffrey leaned into it with his eyes closed. He looked so young. God.

He opened his eyes. "It's beautiful," he murmured. "All of it."

"I know," said Skye. "Positively radiant. Now let's finish what we started."

. . .

. . .

They arrived back at Jeffrey's apartment an hour later only to find it utterly deserted.

"It seems Jane has convinced Rosalind and Batty to hang around for the signings," Skye observed, squirming out of her jacket and tossing it on an armchair.

"I admire her determination," said Jeffrey, depositing his keys on the side table. He flicked the light switch on in the hall and for the brief moment he stood in the doorway, he looked like a young man turned angelic herald.

Skye turned away, cursing her sudden outburst of sentimentality.

Jeffrey stepped into the living room and rested against the wall. "That was amazing."

"It was," agreed Skye. "Thank you."

Jeffrey glanced toward the kitchen. "Would you like anything? I've become a voracious caffeine addict," he added ruefully. "I try to limit myself to four cups of coffee a day."

"Well, that's much better than Jane's thirteen."

They laughed and Jeffrey beckoned her down the hall. It ended in a small, moderately tidy kitchen with mint green wallpaper and a framed photograph of Hound on the wall.

"What?" he asked, looking between Skye and the photograph.

"It wasn't here the last time."

"Something was missing," he said, a bit defensively.

"Hound would be honored." Skye grinned and slipped into one of the chairs around Jeffrey's tiny kitchen table.

Jeffrey busied himself with the task of making coffee and did not speak for several minutes. He poured two mugs and offered her cream and sugar-she declined-and at last he joined her at the table, sliding a mug of steaming coffee in her direction.

"Sometimes I'm afraid," he said after a stretch of silence.

"What of?"

"Of not being able to sustain a living doing what I love. It's so difficult for musicians. They're entire livelihood is based on public opinion. If people like them, anything's possible. If they don't, it's hell. I hate it."

"You're aggressively good at what you do," Skye said seriously. "If the public doesn't recognize that, they're idiots. But may I remind you-you did get accepted at one of the premiere music schools in the world, and you're doing incredibly well there. Why wouldn't it be the same after you graduate?"

Jeffrey averted his eyes, ears reddening. "That's not really-"

"Stop being so modest! A little self promotion would be good for you, Jeffrey, especially when you've got the talent of fifty musicians and a lot of other things besides."

Skye concluded her mini speech with a resolute nod and reached down for her cup of coffee. She was expecting Jeffrey to protest, or begin poking a bit of fun at her genuine sincerity. Thus, she was quite stunned when he rose out of his seat, leaned across the scrubbed wooden table and kissed her.

The first touch was a shot in the stillness, startling them both. Jeffrey tried to pull away, but Skye took a firm hold of his shirt and drew him closer.

And then they were kissing, hot and open-mouthed, and Skye had never been so afraid in her life. Doubt, bewilderment, and awe skittered around her brain like birds in a cage, and it was wonderful and terrible and baffling. She heard a rough scraping sound and realized that Jeffrey had shoved their coffee mugs aside; one of them clattered to the floor.

 _Stop!_ A voice in her head commanded. _God, yes_ , hummed a second. _I am in control, always in control..._ and then- _to hell with control, I want to be happy, I want to do this a thousand times_ ; _I want to surrender and careen into the unknown._

Jeffrey groaned softly and framed Skye's face with hands that were meltingly hot. It was unraveling her, dissolving her logic, and still she returned the kiss, heart pounding wildly. Long seconds ticked past, then her brain finally took hostage of her heart and she retreated, only stopping when her back hit hard plaster.

She and Jeffrey stared at each other from opposite ends of the kitchen, breathing heavy as though they'd just run a mile. His lips were kiss-bruised to a darker color and he looked very strange, almost afraid of her.

"I can't," said Skye, breaking the thick silence. "I can't." She resisted adding ' _you know that,'_ but even so, she still felt greatly betrayed. Jeffrey had known, had to have, when they were on the bridge. He had four Heartlines of his own: he knew the signs. He had to know that Skye had been engaged in a battle with her own treacherous heart, and that every second they spent together was a great danger to her. He must know.

In a blur, she snatched the fallen mug from the linoleum, dropped it hastily in the sink, and swept out of the room with a backwards glance.

Skye retreated to the spare bedroom. As soon as she slammed the door, she fell back against it. A sob escaped unbidden and she quickly stamped it down. Jeffrey had four marks on his arm. Not five. No new one had appeared since his last girlfriend. He didn't love her, but he had kissed her and Skye had kissed him back.  
She had relinquished control.

And it was that, in the end, that would be her downfall.

It seemed she wasn't being paranoid after all.

* * *


	5. Chapter 5

By some great mistake, Skye fell asleep.

When she jolted awake, she was curled tightly on the bed's firm mattress, nauseated beyond words, clutching her left arm in a purely instinctive last attempt at holding off the inevitable.

The skin on her forearm was glowing eerily in the spaces between her clenched fingers. In the room's pressing darkness, it was a hot orange hue that traveled in painful bursts through her main arteries. Her heart felt much too large for her chest; it leaped behind her rib cage like a wild animal raging within the too-small boundaries of captivity. This combined with a blistering, otherworldly pain in arm. Her skin was scorching, smoldering, _burning_ right down the bone. It hurt like nothing Skye had ever felt before, yet she knew what it was with the kind of dread reserved for life's cruelest disappointments.

Then the burning faded, leaving a burgundy inch-long mark in the flesh just above her wrist that looked like a half-healed scar.

Skye Penderwick had a Heartline.

. . .

. . .

There was a darkly comic edge to the whole thing.

Skye had spent a lifetime warding off Heartlines, had never allowed herself to love anyone hard enough to acquire one. And in the end, all it took was one kiss with Jeffrey and twenty-two years of careful vigilance turned to dust. Life was like that. Ironic, unexpected, devastating.

She was sitting on the bed with her feet dangling over the edge, spine ramrod straight. The lone Heartline tingled innocently on her arm and she glared coldly at it, despising its physical existence on her body. She'd been in this position for the greater part of three hours, ignoring the cheerfully chirping birds and morning sunshine that slipped blithely between the blinds. The world had ended. Passing of time meant nothing to her.

 _Weakness is the greatest flaw,_ said the horrible voice in her head. _You succumbed to a brief, meaningless kiss and destroyed a lifetime of effort._

 _But,_ countered the other, _of all the people I could have fallen in love with, Jeffrey is not a terrible choice._

_No. Love is a mistake, a defect. The damage it creates is irreversible._

"Shut up," Skye muttered to herself, flopping heavily back on the mattress. However crushing and inconvenient, she was in love with Jeffrey—she had a Heartline to prove it—and she must deal with the consequences. There had to be a way to go about hiding the evidence from Jeffrey, her sisters, and the rest of civilization, even if the solution was as primitive as wearing long sleeves until the day she died. But there was also the problem of the inexorable post-kiss awkwardness that would hang between her and Jeffrey, souring their friendship and turning it inside out. The thought clenched somewhere deep in her gut.

That was the great mystery of it all. Why had he kissed her? Was it a strange way of thanking her for having faith in his career as a musician? Skye thought of the encouragement she'd given Jeffrey the night before and wondered if, in a haze of enthusiastic gratitude, he had gotten confused and blurred the lines between romance and friendly affection. But, in all honesty, nothing about the kiss had been remotely friendly. It had been uncoordinated and electric and absolutely the hottest thing Skye had ever experienced. And, judging by his flushed neck and trembling hands, Jeffrey had felt similarly. Why, then, had he resolutely treated her like a very platonic combination of best friend and sister for ten years?

Perhaps he hadn't meant it after all, thought Skye. He likely regretted kissing her as much as she regretted getting a Heartline. At this very moment, he too, was probably cursing himself for that brief moment of stupidity, deeply annoyed because he really meant nothing by it.

The image turned her heart to stone.

. . .

. . .

At half past noon, there came a light knock on the door.

"It's me," said Rosalind.

"I'd really rather be alone," said Skye.

As all good sisters did, Rosalind ignored this and swept into the bedroom. She closed the door behind her with a soft click and, without turning around, asked, "What exactly happened last night?"

Skye said nothing.

"Because Jeffrey's been sitting balefully at his piano all morning without playing a single note, you refuse to come out of this room, and neither of you seem to want to interact with anyone." Rosalind turned around. "What happened?"

Skye remained mute.

"I will continue to ask until you tell me, Skye." While Rosalind often worried, it was a rare occurrence for her to worry this sharply. A fleeting sense of guilt skittered in Skye's stomach, but she shook it off.

"I need to be alone. Please."

"Listen, I can't help you if you won't tell me what upset you."

"Good. I don't need help." The fresh Heartline twinged on Skye's forearm and she clenched her left fist. It was ruining her, just as she had predicted.

"Somehow, I doubt the accuracy of that statement." Rosalind's concerned expression dissolved into one of acute anger and it bewildered Skye. "I didn't come in here to suffer through a temper tantrum from my adult sister. Tell me what's going on or stop acting like a child."

"You can't understand."

"Try me," Rosalind said coldly.

There was nothing else for it. Skye wrenched her sleeve up. Rosalind stared at the vein-shot underside of her sister's forearm, at the single Heartline marring the skin there. A beat passed. Then Skye yanked her sweater sleeve back down and looked up at Rosalind, grimly triumphant.

But this did not have the effect she thought it would, because Rosalind's next words were not ones of sisterly sympathy.

"Get over yourself."

Skye blinked.

"You have a Heartline. So what? That isn't the end of the world. It means you're human, Skye, that you have the capacity to care deeply for another person."

"But it's worse than that," Skye said, her voice shaking a little. "For years I've woken up each morning and immediately checked my arm for a Heartline, terrified I would get one suddenly and lose control of my emotions. You know how I am! I covet logic and common sense, and love will only ruin these qualities! I've put so much effort into avoiding Heartlines and the fact that I failed infuriates me."

Skye went silent, clenching her jaw so tightly her neck ached. Rosalind took one look at her, crossed the room in three steps, and joined her on the bed.

"Skye, scientists have been trying to understand Heartlines for centuries. They don't serve any practical function, and no one has ever been able to figure out why the physical body echoes the emotional one by burning a red mark into the skin. But I see them as battle scars. They're the manifestation of the courage we display when we allow someone to become special to us, to let them touch the deepest, tenderest part of ourselves. No one with a Heartline makes it out of this life unscathed—no matter how hard we try to avoid getting hurt—but we go on loving anyway. That's why Daddy always says we should be called Homo Amorus instead of Homo Sapiens. There's something in us that still believes that, despite everything, it really is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all."

Relief filtered into the space behind Skye's ribs and thrummed warmly there, anchoring her. She felt inexplicably light, as though she'd been living with all of Earth's gravity focused on her and it had finally lifted.

Rosalind looked at Skye, her face oddly bright. "Be proud of that little mark. Falling in love is a phenomenal thing."

Then she whisked noiselessly from the bedroom, leaving Skye with the truth ringing in her ears.


	6. Chapter 6

Later, Skye would look back on that week as one of the worst of her life.

It seemed to drag on into eternity, shrouding her clarity in a gray haze of doubt and heartache. Early on, she sometimes collided with Jeffrey in the hall or on the stairs—but rather than acknowledging her presence, he stared resolutely ahead, never so much as muttering an apology in her direction. Then he would exit the scene as though she had concealed a time bomb somewhere on her personage and it would explode if he didn't depart as quickly as possible. As the days stretched on, he seemed to have devised an elaborate sort of plan designed to avoid run-ins, because Skye saw not one glimpse of him after the third day of grueling awkwardness. To be fair, she spent most of her time locked in the guest room, puzzling bitterly over calculus equations with a curious tightness in her throat, while the world outside churned blithely on. Through her modest bedroom window, she could see the grass in Central Park, lush and luminous beneath a bright sky. Everywhere she turned; it seemed the city was bursting with color and vibrancy.

It was beautiful, and she loathed it.

Skye wanted lightning and floods and howling wind. She wanted the Earth to shudder beneath her feet and crack into pieces. She wanted a sign, an acknowledgment from the universe that something important had happened.

Instead, all she got was the odd, unsettling feeling that she'd left something, or that something had left her.

. . .

Six nights after the kiss, Skye was sitting alone in the living room, contemplating the wall. She was trying again to make sense of Jeffrey's evasive behavior. He initiated the kiss, she thought. It wasn't his place to avoid and ignore her like a temperamental toddler who hadn't gotten his way. It was extremely selfish behavior and she hated it, truly. The events in the kitchen seemed to have brought out the worst in her friend, and he wasn't the one grappling with a fresh Heartline on his wrist. A pang of hot rage leaped in her stomach and she fell back on the sofa, jaw clenched.

A montage of images flashed through her mind. Jeffrey: lying half-conscious beneath a hedge, flinging pebbles fearlessly at an angry bull, scattering reams of sheet music as he wrestled her beneath his grand piano, yanking Batty from the path of an approaching car, shooting ketchup smeared arrows at a very bad portrait of Dexter Dupree, sprinting in earnest toward the Penderwicks that last morning with a look on his face Skye would never forget. She thought of Jeffrey dribbling a soccer ball in his dormitory, then hurriedly snatching her by the arm and tugging them both under a bunk bed as agitated adult footsteps approached.

Flickers of other memories rose to the surface, like the strange, affectionate remarks Jeffrey made when he assumed Skye wasn't really listening. Like the times he held her gaze for just a moment too long. Like the sweetly melancholy clarinet pieces he played for no one at all, never knowing Skye was just out of sight around the corner, listening as she'd never listened before and feeling as though she had known the boy all her life but didn't really know him at all.

Skye sat up.

She was tired of being delicate. She wanted an explanation, a straight answer, a yes or no. For eleven years she had ignored everything, convinced herself it was enormously foolish to entertain any thoughts of Jeffrey as anything but a friend. But the kiss had presented an opportunity and the Heartline had confirmed it. Her worst fears had come to pass; there was nothing left to lose. And Heartline or not, she was beginning to see that she did in fact love Jeffrey. She had always loved him in a stubborn, bumbling way. He was still her dearest friend, something had simply changed. Neither of them had noticed it before, but it seemed that all the lines they'd carefully placed in the sand had blown away when they weren't looking.

Now, she felt it was time to end the gut twisting back-and-forth of adolescent confusion and chemistry. They deserved the truth. That much was obvious.

. . .

It was well past midnight when a key clicked in the lock and the apartment door edged carefully open. Jeffrey stood on the threshold, his silhouette illuminated by the fluorescent glare of the hall light. He paused for a moment, then stepped into the room and closed the door behind him, throwing everything into momentary darkness. Only when he fumbled clumsily for a lamp and turned to put his jacket down did he notice Skye sitting at one end of the sofa, watching him.

He froze.

"We need to talk," said Skye, her calm exterior belying her racing heart.

"There's nothing to talk about."

"You know damn well there is!"

Jeffrey blinked at her, startled by the uncharacteristic usage of a four-letter word. He shifted uncomfortably and sank into the armchair opposite Skye. He seemed to toy with several responses but eventually gave up, falling into an awkward silence.

"I just want to know why. Why did you act that way in the kitchen last week, then completely ignore me? I deserve an explanation at the very least."

Jeffrey stared at her with those unfathomable green eyes for a moment before speaking. "Look, Skye, I didn't intend to . . . I never wanted to ruin our relationship. You know that. I know you know that. But I don't think there's a way to explain what happened, so I'm not going to try. I just need you to know that I'm sorry for any damage done."

"But you've avoided me all week."

He was tactful enough not to point out the fact that she herself had spent the majority of the week holed up in the guest room. "Only because I thought it was in our best interest to have some time apart after . . . things."

"Well, there's where you were wrong," said Skye, growing angrier. "Because I've been turning myself inside out trying to understand the nature of our relationship, trying to piece together our experiences into a story that makes sense, trying to figure out if our whole friendship has been a lie. And on top of it, I have to live with a reminder now."

Jeffrey's eyes widened in a way that might have been comical had the situation been less tense. Skye could almost see the cogs turning beneath his scalp as he fought to understand the meaning of her last remark.

"I'll save you the time," she murmured.

And pushed up her left sleeve.

Her Heartline was cheerily crimson against a backdrop of creamy skin and Jeffrey stared at it first in shock, then wonderment, as though he was glimpsing something rare and precious. Which, in her case, perhaps he was.

"I can't believe it," he said after a long pause.

"Yes," Skye said sarcastically. "I present to you rare proof that Skye Penderwick does, in fact, have a heart."

"It's lovely," he said. The words made something like sunlight burst in her chest. "But I don't—"

"I never told you this," she interrupted, "but I've dedicated my life to not getting a Heartline. I find the whole affair tedious and confusing, and have always feared that love and Heartlines would distract me from accomplishing the things I want to accomplish. Since I was young I've watched these silly marks eat away at people's lives and I never wanted that to happen to me. No one seemed worth that sort of sacrifice. But I'm starting to think there's a possibility I was wrong."

"Wrong? Wrong how?" asked Jeffrey, a fire burning behind his eyes.

"You put this Heartline on my arm, Jeffrey, despite all my attempts at ignoring my affection for you. I always smother emotion with rationality. But somehow you managed to shatter a logician's rigid formula, and frankly, I couldn't be more grateful. I used to believe I would regret getting a Heartline, but I could never regret you."

Jeffrey seemed momentarily too stunned to respond, so Skye took advantage of his silence to say, "I thought my feelings would fade with time, but now I know there's a reason why Heartlines never go away. Love can change, and people can part ways and move on, but the ones who make it into our hearts are always in there somewhere. I don't know what I'd do if you weren't in my life. I—" her voice wavered, but Jeffrey immediately leaned over and squeezed her hand in warm reassurance. "I'm terrified of how much you could hurt me if you wanted to, but," she inhaled sharply and squared her shoulders, "I trust you not to. There's no one I feel safer giving my heart to. I know you don't feel the same way, but I know you'll take care of it. I don't regret this, Jeffrey. I love you."

In an instant, Jeffrey had abandoned the armchair and launched himself onto the stretch of sofa beside her. "Skye. God, I love you, too. I love you so much."

There was a bittersweet ring to those words. He didn't really love her, not in that way. If he did, he would have five marks on his wrist, not four. That was the thing about Heartlines. They didn't necessarily come in pairs.

"But you only—" Skye glanced at his left forearm, which was obscured by a navy shirtsleeve. "You don't actually—it's fine." She cleared her throat. "Just as long as we remain friends, that's all I ask."

Jeffrey looked quite taken aback. "No," he said, rumpling his hair in frustration. "That isn't the only possible outcome of this situation."

"How can there be another?"

"I wasn't just saying that I love you. I do."

"You don't! At least, not enough for me to give you a Heartline. This is what I meant, Jeffrey," said Skye. "Heartlines take perfectly good relationships and tear them apart. I don't want to stand here watching our friendship go up in flames." She stood, cheeks flaming. Tipsy laughter rolled in through one of the half opened windows, so she marched over and slammed it down with all her pent up angst and frustration. "Look, if you don't actually love me, just be an adult and say so. I don't want to listen some ridiculous lie designed to spare my feelings."

Then Jeffrey was on his feet, facing her, eyes glittering with something fierce and bright. "Come here."

Skye didn't move for a moment, then wordlessly approached him.

Jeffrey took the fabric of his shirtsleeve and pushed it carefully up his arm, revealing his four Heartlines. "Look at the last one," he said softly.

Skye did, and saw that it was glowing faintly. The others were not. They seemed dim and ordinary by comparison.

"Now look at yours."

Skye raised her left forearm to the light and saw to her utter astonishment that her's was glowing as well. She bit back a gasp.

Jeffrey smiled. "Heartlines never glow when the love is one-sided. You should know that, I thought you were an expert."

"I don't understand, I thought—"

"Do you remember Ava Nelson?" asked Jeffrey, cutting her off.

"She was your last girlfriend."

"Right, and we were together when I got my fourth Heartline."

"I don't see how this is relevant," said Skye. "That was ages ago. Two years."

"Yes, well, at the time I thought I got a Heartline because I was in love with her. I was wrong, though," he added. "It was never her. It was you. She reminded me of you."

The world came to a screeching halt.

"I broke it off with Ava because something just didn't feel right. And for a while I thought the problem had been solved. But then I started noticing that this Heartline would tingle every time I was with you. Then I realized."

"Oh my god." Skye made no efforts at her concealing her shock. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I could see your left wrist, Skye. There wasn't a single Heartline. Telling you would have ruined the good we already had. But now you see I was telling the truth. I do love you."

Skye's Heartline glowed like the sun and she placed her hand on Jeffrey's cheek. "Thank you," she whispered.

Then they were leaning in like two magnets drawn together; it was a great inevitability. It had always been.

This time the kiss was free of doubt and worry. The sensation Skye felt in that moment was betrayed by the confines of the English language. It was perfection and radiance and cosmos and microbe and everything and nothing all fused into one impossibility that made her dizzy at the thought of assigning a word to it. No amount of alphabetic sawdust could ever contain the breadth and depth of this culmination of every decision she had ever made in life. This was herself as a link in an unfathomable chain reaction, and she never wanted it to end.

. . .

Skye was beginning to understand why so many people believed in God.

Of all the choices she could have made, the glaring majority of them had led her to solving physics equations, avoiding others, and generally being on her own.

She hadn't ended up with the life she'd thought she would have. Skye had offered herself to another person, and that person had accepted her completely, despite a plethora of logical reasons that should have chased her away. People could betray each other or get divorced or decide their differences were irreconcilable, but that was not one of the paths available to her. Skye was going to spend her life with one phenomenal, stubborn, determined and utterly flawless man, and nothing could ever change that. The end and beginning of all there was had started with a chance collision in a secret hedge passageway and not the slightest inkling that an undiscovered force of nature had just been set into motion.

But it would end some day, as all great things inexorably did.

And Skye, despite every drive of logic and rationale, couldn't help but hope in the deepest chasm of her heart that she and Jeffrey would always exist, that there would never be an end to them. They would come together again, and even though it defied the scientific world she loved—the world she could touch and quantify and verify with her own two eyes—she hoped, fiercely and completely, that their bond was infinite.

She hoped—no, she prayed—for the very first time in her life, that she was wrong. She prayed there was more than what her mind, for all the things it could do that others could not, could understand.

She prayed that not even death could separate a pair as perfect as Skye Magee Penderwick and Jeffrey Tifton.

. . .

The End

. . .

* * *


End file.
